Religion and Mental Health 1

On an occasion like this, i t has been customary to select a topic, review the relavant literature in the particular field of study and produce a thesis. This being an inaugural meeting I am aware of the fact that colleagues and friends from other professions, not directly related to Psychiatry and Psychology, are also present in ihe audience. With this consideration, a rather general topic namely "Religion and Mental Health" has been chosen, and too much technical details are avoided. Even though a few references are listed at the end of this paper, the material presented is not compiled from their abstracts Those who are interested in more details will find those references useful An attempt is made to prevent certain observations and generalisations from what I have learned, discovered and experienced during the enormous amount of time spent with clients seeking professional help. Introspecting and sifting the insights gained as a result of this kind of interaction with individuals, have been very rewarding. I have learned a lot from my patients spending time with them in their distress, agony, pain, joy, ecstasy and spiritual struggles conflicts which were partially responsible for their psychological disturbances. It became quite obvious how important it was to help them to resolve some of this, for them to be able to recover and function as effective meaningful persons in future. I am sure many psychiatrists and psychotherapists fail to recognise the importance of considering the spiritual nature of man, partly due to lack of time available for each patient and partly because of the lacunae in our theoretical training. People are often misguided by statements like "Religion is a man-made prop or opium to give solace to the individual with certain psychological weakness." Sigmund Frued the father of psychoanalysis has been misunderstood to have lead people away from religion I f you study some of his work in detail, it becomes obvious that he was trying to deliver people from dependency and magical expectations they had, towards God and certain kind of organised religions. In his later personal letters to a friend, he has expressed his sorrow in realising that people have misunderstood him and mentions that he has not been against a healthy belief in God.